Spring Festival tourism brings in $617mn
February 16, 2013, 12:58 pm

Shops and restaurants across China earned $85.5 billion in the past week. [Xinhua]

China reported $617.8 million in tourism revenue during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday this year.

Beijing was host to 8.68 million tourists during the festivities from February 9-15, up 7.5 per cent year on year, says the China Municipal Tourism commission.

China’s Spring Festival resembles the traditional Western Christmas celebrations as people travel back for family reunions amid traditional festivities.

This is also the biggest buying season of consumers of the world’s second largest economy.

The Palace Museum received 300,000 tourists in the past seven days.

1.02 million tourists visited the fair at the Temple of Earth, the largest of its kind in the city, marking a 9 per cent increase from last year.

The accompanying holiday shopping spree significantly boosted China’s retail sales during the week-long Lunar New Year festival, similar data released on Friday by the ministry of commerce (MOC) showed.

Shops and restaurants across the country earned $85.5 billion in the past week, an increase of 14.7 per cent from 2012.

Chinese consumers’ spending on luxury goods will continue to rise, even if it is not at home, according to global consultancy firm McKinsey.

China will account for a third of the $175 billion global luxury goods market by 2015, up from 27 per cent of the $145 billion market in 2012, it said in a report released in December.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.